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Many of the world’s nations are gathering starting Monday in Spain for a high-level conference to tackle the growing gap between rich and poor nations and try to drum up trillions of dollars needed to close it. The United States, previously a major contributor, pulled its participation, so finding funding will be tough.The four-day Financing for Development meeting in the southern city of Seville is taking place as many countries face escalating debt burdens, declining investments, decreasing international aid and increasing trade barriers.“Financing is the engine of development. And right now, this engine is sputtering,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in his opening comments at the conference.“We are here in Sevilla to change course, to repair and rev up the engine of development to accelerate investment at the scale and speed required.”The U.N. and Spain, the conference co-hosts, believe the meeting is an opportunity to reverse the downward spiral, close the staggering $4 trillion annual financing gap to promote development, bring millions of people out of poverty and help achieve the U.N.’s wide-ranging and badly lagging Sustainable Development Goals for 2030.Even though the gathering comes amid global economic uncertainty and high geopolitical tensions, there is hope among the hosts that the world can address one of the most important global challengesensuring all people have access to food, health care, education and water.“The government of Spain believes that this summit is an opportunity for us to change course, for us to raise our voice in the face of those who seek to convince us that rivalry and competition will set the tone for humanity and for its future,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez told the delegates as he inaugurated the conference. The ambitious package seeks to reverse decline in development High-level delegations, including more than 70 world leaders, are attending in Seville, the U.N. said, along with several thousand others from international financial institutions, development banks, philanthropic organizations, the private sector and civil society.At its last preparatory meeting on June 17, the United States rejected the 38-page outcome document that had been negotiated for months by the U.N.’s 193 member nations and announced its withdrawal from the process and from the Seville conference.The rest of the countries then approved the document by consensus and sent it to Seville, where it is expected to be adopted by conference participants without changes. It will be known as the Seville Commitmentor Compromiso de Sevilla in Spanish.The document says the leaders and high-level representatives have decided to launch “an ambitious package of reforms and actions to close the financing gap with urgency,” saying it is now estimated at $4 trillion a year.Among the proposals and actions, it calls for minimum tax revenue of 15% of a country’s gross domestic product to increase government resources, a tripling of lending by multilateral development banks, and scaling up private financing by providing incentives for investing in critical areas like infrastructure. It also calls for a number of reforms to help countries deal with rising debt.U.N. trade chief Rebeca Grynspan said recently that “development is going backward” and the global debt crisis has worsened.Last year, 3.3 billion people were living in countries that pay more interest on their debts than they spend on health or education and the number will increase to 3.4 billion people this year, according to Grynspan. And developing countries will pay $947 billion to service debts this year, up from $847 billion last year.She spoke at a press conference where an expert group on debt appointed by Guterres presented 11 recommendations that they say can resolve the debt crisis, empower borrowing countries and create a fairer system. US objections to the document While the U.S. objected to many actions in the outcome document, American diplomat Jonathan Shrier told the June 17 meeting: “Our commitment to international cooperation and long-term economic development remains steadfast.”He said, however, that the text “crosses many of our red lines,” including interfering with the governance of international financial institutions, tripling the annual lending capacity of multilateral development banks and proposals envisioning a role for the U.N. in the global debt architecture.Shrier also objected to proposals on trade, tax and innovation that are not in line with U.S. policy, as well as language on a U.N. framework convention on international tax cooperation.The United States was the world’s largest single founder of foreign aid. The Trump administration has dismantled its main aid agency, the U.S. Agency for International Development, while drastically slashing foreign assistance funding, calling it wasteful and contrary to the Republican president’s agenda. Other Western donors also have cut back international aid.U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed said last week that the U.S. withdrawal from the conference was “unfortunate,” stressing that “many of the recommendations you see cannot be pursued without a continuous engagement with the U.S.”After Seville, “we will engage again with the U.S. and hope that we can make the case that they be part of the success of pulling millions of people out of poverty.” Lederer reported from the United Nations. Joseph Wilson and Edith M. Lederer, Associated Press
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Home Depot is buying specialty building products distributor GMS Inc. in a deal valued at approximately $4.3 billion.The Atlanta home improvement chain said Monday the transaction will help strengthen Home Depot’s relationship with professional contractors.GMS of Tucker, Georgia, is a distributor of specialty building products including drywall, ceilings, steel framing and other complementary products related to construction and remodeling projects in residential and commercial end markets.As part of the deal, a subsidiary of Home Depot’s SRS Distribution Inc. will start a cash tender offer to buy all outstanding shares of GMS for $110 per share. The total equity value of the transaction is approximately $4.3 billion. The deal is worth about $5.5 billion, including debt.Last year, Home Depot purchased SRS Distribution, a materials provider for professionals, in a deal valued at approximately $18.25 billion including debt. SRS provides materials for professionals like roofers, landscapers and pool contractors.The GMS transaction is expected to close by the end of fiscal 2025. Shares of the company jumped 11% in premarket trading. Home Depot shares slipped less than 1%. Michelle Chapman, AP Business Writer
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The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling tied to birthright citizenship prompted confusion and phone calls to lawyers as people who could be affected tried to process a convoluted legal decision with major humanitarian implications. The court’s conservative majority on Friday granted President Donald Trump his request to curb federal judges’ power but did not decide the legality of his bid to restrict birthright citizenship. That outcome has raised more questions than answers about a right long understood to be guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution: that anyone born in the United States is considered a citizen at birth, regardless of their parents’ citizenship or legal status. Lorena, a 24-year-old Colombian asylum seeker who lives in Houston and is due to give birth in September, pored over media reports on Friday morning. She was looking for details about how her baby might be affected, but said she was left confused and worried. “There are not many specifics,” said Lorena, who like others interviewed by Reuters asked to be identified by her first name out of fear for her safety. “I don’t understand it well.” She is concerned that her baby could end up with no nationality. “I dont know if I can give her mine,” she said. “I also don’t know how it would work, if I can add her to my asylum case. I don’t want her to be adrift with no nationality.” Trump, a Republican, issued an order after taking office in January that directed U.S. agencies to refuse to recognize the citizenship of children born in the U.S. who do not have at least one parent who is an American citizen or lawful permanent resident. The order was blocked by three separate U.S. district court judges, sending the case on a path to the Supreme Court. The resulting decision said Trumps policy could go into effect in 30 days but appeared to leave open the possibility of further proceedings in the lower courts that could keep the policy blocked. On Friday afternoon, plaintiffs filed an amended lawsuit in federal court in Maryland seeking to establish a nationwide class of people whose children could be denied citizenship. If they are not blocked nationwide, the restrictions could be applied in the 28 states that did not contest them in court, creating “an extremely confusing patchwork” across the country, according to Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a policy analyst for the non-partisan Migration Policy Institute. “Would individual doctors, individual hospitals be having to try to figure out how to determine the citizenship of babies and their parents?” she said. The drive to restrict birthright citizenship is part of Trump’s broader immigration crackdown, and he has framed automatic citizenship as a magnet for people to come to give birth. “Hundreds of thousands of people are pouring into our country under birthright citizenship, and it wasn’t meant for that reason,” he said during a White House press briefing on Friday. WORRIED CALLS Immigration advocates and lawyers in some Republican-led states said they received calls from a wide range of pregnant immigrants and their partners following the ruling. They were grappling with how to explain it to clients who could be dramatically affected, given all the unknowns of how future litigation would play out or how the executive order would be implemented state by state. Lynn Tramonte, director of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance said she got a call on Friday from an East Asian temporary visa holder with a pregnant wife. He was anxious because Ohio is not one of the plaintiff states and wanted to know how he could protect his child’s rights. “He kept stressing that he was very interested in the rights included in the Constitution,” she said. Advocates underscored the gravity of Trumps restrictions, which would block an estimated 150,000 children born in the U.S. annually from receiving automatic citizenship. “It really creates different classes of people in the country with different types of rights,” said Juliana Macedo do Nascimento, a spokesperson for the immigrant rights organization United We Dream. “That is really chaotic.” Adding uncertainty, the Supreme Court ruled that members of two plaintiff groups in the litigationCASA, an immigrant advocacy service in Maryland, and the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Projectwould still be covered by lower court blocks on the policy. Whether someone in a state where Trump’s policy could go into effect could join one of the organizations to avoid the restrictions or how state or federal officials would check for membership remained unclear. Betsy, a U.S. citizen who recently graduated from high school in Virginia and a CASA member, said both of her parents came to the U.S. from El Salvador two decades ago and lacked legal status when she was born. “I feel like it targets these innocent kids who haven’t even been born,” she said, declining to give her last name for concerns over her family’s safety. Nivida, a Honduran asylum seeker in Louisiana, is a member of the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project and recently gave birth. She heard on Friday from a friend without legal status who is pregnant and wonders about the situation under Louisiana’s Republican governor, since the state is not one of those fighting Trumps order. “She called me very worried and asked whats going to happen,” she said. “If her child is born in Louisiana . . . is the baby going to be a citizen?” Ted Hesson and Kristina Cooke, Reuters
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